


a truth, a lie, a beginning

by stella-of-agnoste (oblivioluna)



Category: In the Bleak Midwinter (Webcomic)
Genre: Dramaxil is basically the Force because I said so, F/M, I don’t know how we got here, ivan aka hot redhead makes a cameo once, like literally - Freeform, tfw you perceive your ‘enemy’ aka soulmate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:28:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29026482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oblivioluna/pseuds/stella-of-agnoste
Summary: They’re bonded in more ways than one.
Relationships: Anya/Omega
Comments: 13
Kudos: 33





	a truth, a lie, a beginning

The mansion is empty.

Achingly so, and it hurts.

It would hurt less, even, if Delta would make his presence more known. Omega’s brother has rarely visited ever since he brought her here, and despite his claims about her being the answer he’s been searching for all this while, the behavior he shows is quiet, in fact, the opposite. The resulting consequences of that is one, an empty manor, and two, too much silence than she knows how to deal with. The mere fact she’s counted all the windows and doors within the modern infrastructure says something on its own. 236. 33. Three baths, four bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a swimming pool on the topmost level. She doesn’t bother to venture down much. Everything here is cold, so cold, in sharp glass, taut marble, spiraling columns of gray and white and black quartz melded to look like mirrors reflecting her own face back at her. 

Partially, that’s why she strays from the pool the most. It’s a basin of turquoise that suffocates her every time she comes near it. Anya can do nothing but tug at her long hair and pace around empty corridors whenever she crosses the hallway that leads towards it.

Twenty five years of drowning.

She still feels like she’s under.

There is much to do, and yet there isn’t. She doesn’t clean, because apparently the robots take care of that. There’s a small, circular android she’s become fond of on the upper levels, making cat-like noises whenever it bumps into walls. She calls it Anton. Worthy of praise. It’s quite dumb, but it’s doing its best. She does cook for herself, even though the robots have also offered to do so, and minds the piano in one of the rooms. It’s been years, but she knows how to play simple melodies. And sometimes, she wanders the library, hands flitting from one shelf to another. In a fairytale with a setting like this - all winter, all snow - she might’ve marked her own story the beginning of one.

Except fairytales don’t end in annihilation, poison gas, or murderers on every side she sees, and the snow falling down is probably tainted with god-knows-what chemicals from the factory wastes. A bird chirps somewhere, and when Anya looks out the window, perched by one of the circular alcoves on the upper level, it flutters tinted sapphire wings. The only oddity in it is the rotten flesh near its beak.

All beauty must submit to the horror of violent things, perhaps, and maybe that’s why she’s here, too.

A surge of pain gallops through her nerves, and she lets out a small gasp, clutching at her right hand. The redness on her palm hasn’t faded, despite the medicine she’s been given. And she knows what medicine to work, too. But Dramaxil will not work, apparently, with calamine or zinc oxide. Normal human skin would react to those, at least.

But she’s not normal, because she’s literally survived death three times over now, and has come back from it.

That much is certain.

_ “STATUS REPORT.” _

Anya shrieks as a monitor android appears directly in front of her, and she nearly tumbles down to the ground. Forgetting to use her left, her right hand catches onto the side of the window, and she lets out a grunt of pain as she lands on the ground, knees colliding with the marble floors. Excellent. Now she’s in agony in more than one place.

The monitor android has apparently caught onto this.  _ “Should you require assistance, I am allowed to summon Master Delta--” _

“I’m fine,” she blurts out, clutching her hand. “I’m fine. You don’t need to summon Delta from the mission. He’s already hard at work retrieving his brother and Ivan anyhow.”

He promised.

He has to keep it, as long as she’s here--

\--because if he doesn’t, that means she’s done for.

\--because if he does, he’s still going to consider her the answer to something, and that could mean experimentation--

Anya buries the thought away. “Please. I’m fine. I require no assistance.”

The monitor android whirs and clicks once, and for a second, she thinks it has half a mind to grab her and drag her to the infirmary. But then it doesn’t, and when it starts to leave, she exhales in relief.

Across from her, the pool glimmers in the daylight like a taunt.

_____

The pain gets worse.

She doesn’t tell Delta about it, because when he comes back a week early, he’s bruised and a wreck all over. Although she’s a nurse, he heads straight to the infirmary for the medical droids to attend to him.

He doesn’t ask her to help.

He asks her to watch.

On the outside, he looks human enough, except for the eyes. They’re a poisonous green and glow in the dark midnight of their surroundings, monitors and screens all around them showing his vitals glimmering a sharp blue. When the droids mend his skin - or what passes for skin, molten gray and silver wires at the edges; there is no blood or bruise - he stares at her all the while, as if trying to puzzle her out with a hawk’s gaze.

She doesn’t look away, some dark emotion thrumming in her heart.

She’s a problem, and what a problem she’ll be.

“One of the Wraiths has them hostage,” he says darkly, and her hands ball into fists.

_ No.  _ “Are they--” She swallows. “Are they hurt?”

Delta is deathly silent. She can see the anger in the way his jaw works.

“I will slaughter her for touching my brother,” he hisses. “Sentries have already been dispatched to break down that snake’s defenses, but I am afraid it will take weeks.”

“We don’t have weeks!” she exclaims, bolting upright. 

“I’m aware, Anya.” The way he says her name is like a curse and an answer.

“Then why are you being so  _ calm about this?!” _

“Is that what you perceive? My,” he says, chuckling a bit. 

“This isn’t a joke.”

“No, it’s not.” Gooseflesh rises on her skin as his eyes flit down to her hand, irises glowing a bit. “Tell me, how is your injury? With treatment, I should hope, since I strictly informed the droids to attend to you.”

Anya grits her teeth. “It’s fine.”

“Liar.”

Her eyes snap wide open.

“You are a good woman, Anya,” he says slowly, standing as the droids leave him alone, needles retracting into metal defenses. Not once did she see what lay beneath his white skinsuit, but she doesn’t need to. Nor, perhaps, wants to. “But a terrible liar, as all humans are. Tell me. The pain is worsening, isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t aware you were so interested in my feelings,” she bites back.

Delta lets out a low bark of laughter at that. “Oh, I’m interested in a lot of things you don’t know. But you can feel it, can’t you?”

“What?”

“This is no normal pain. Dramaxil was created specifically to harm us, wasn’t it?” he asks, as if he’s the teacher and she the student.

“I’m no android.”

“You’re not.” He tilts his head. “But you’re not exactly human, are you? So that leaves us both with a question,” Delta says, leaning down to her height. She’s hardly breathing as he meets her gaze evenly, mouth quirked up cruelly at the edges. 

“What,” he murmurs, “are you?”

____

The pool is still taunting her. Her hand feels like it’s on fire.

It hurts so badly that when she gets up in the middle of the night, she bites down on her lip to prevent herself from screaming. Anya rolls up the sleeves of her pyjamas, and there it is: her right hand, looking a little burnt, but not at all damaged like it feels. Something’s wrong with her body. Something’s  _ wrong. _

She gasps as she attempts to stumble towards the infirmary, and only realizes she’s drawn blood from the inside of her cheek as she bites down so hard to not yell outright. The pain is spiking up and down in waves, guiding her, almost. Anya feels as if she’s going insane, because she can swear the next wave of agony that comes veers her left.

All that lies in front of her is a window looking out to the starless sky above.

Another shudder of pain. Her emotions override her rationality that usually overcomes her in the heat of battle - her own battle in the medical field, when it comes to treating the best and worst of patients - and she lays a hand smack flat on the window, hoping the cold will ward off the heat in her palm.

Except it does a lot more than that.

The pain goes away entirely, as if whisked away by magic, and she walks directly through the glass not of her own volition.

Into a basement with two bodies tied to poles.

One familiar shock of red hair that brings her heartrate up. 

And another, taller, more muscular, white-haired, staring right at her.

He’s bruised and bloody, almost human.

The world is silent. The sound has left her ears, and she isn’t sure who speaks first.

“It’s you.”

Omega’s mouth carves into a scowl.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t know how I’m here,” she admits after a while, refusing to let go of his stare. 

“Then - can’t you go back--”

“What happened to you?” she says, adrenaline coursing through her veins. It’s like muscle movement, the nurse coming to fruition in her mind. “You look awful, and Ivan -  _ Ivan, listen to me--” _

“He can’t hear you,” he says numbly. Something passes between them, sharp and electric. Between stunning ocean eyes and a set of dark gray ones. Enemies on either side of a war, destined to battle each other forever and ever. He killed her once. She killed him once. They’re even now, and whether or not one of them decides to level the battlefield is up to either of them entirely. But she’s so tired of war.

“Are you two...” Anya breaks off. They’re not okay. There’s nothing she can do even though she wants to. “Surviving?”

“If you could call it that,” the android gasps, almost smirking mirthlessly at the joke. But it fades fast. “You must leave, Anya. The Wraith is out for your blood.”

“What even is she?” she demands. “She’s taken you two captive--” Anya trails off. 

“Anya?”

And that’s the thing, see. Delta wields her name like a taunt. With Omega, it feels like his name fits naturally in his own mouth, and his in hers.

“Omega,” she says slowly. “She’s keeping you and Ivan captive because of me.”

_ “Anya--” _

“This is why Delta wants his answers,” she says, swallowing, resisting the emotion choking up her throat. “And why that -  _ Wraith _ \- wants to keep you and Ivan prisoner. It’s me. It’s always been about  _ me.” _

Of course it’s about her.

Why wouldn’t it be? A girl with hair like silver linings and the dawning of the sun, with hands meant for healing, not hurting. Who beat death herself. What other use would she have other than a pawn in a never-ending war. How many times will she keep trading herself to stave off this guilt she’s been harboring for years and years, alone in an isolation chamber,  _ drowning-- _

Water.

She grabs at her throat.

It’s only after the noise leaves her ears once more that she realizes Omega is speaking again.

“I refuse to let you come here.”

“What?”

“Let my brother send his sentries. Stay exactly where you are,” he growls, and for a second, she can understand why the commander of the android army is called the Grey Wolf. Predator out on the prowl. “You will  _ not  _ leave if I have anything to say about it. Do not be a fool,” he says, almost as if reading her mind. “If you even think about going here, you will be shot dead, revived, experimented on, and killed for good. Do not underestimate the Wraith. Or the rest of her forces.”

“I’m not sitting around and doing nothing!” she screams at him, enraged.

He scowls only deeper at that, but when he speaks, he’s oddly calm.

“Anya.”

_ “What?” _

“Is your hand better?”

She startles, looking down at her wound.

The pain has gone entirely.

“You--” Omega has been balling his own fist. She recalls the battle, then: him saving her, his own hands touching Dramaxil.

“Is yours better?” she asks, slowly.

He nods, imperceptibly.

“Yes.”

Black shutters in front of her eyes, and before she knows it, she’s back in the mansion, one hand over the window. The sky stares back at her.

It’s only after she lets her hand drop she realizes that was the first time she’s been truthful to anyone in weeks.

____

The second time comes from his side.

The pain is now gone entirely, but she suspects Delta senses something unusual going on with her. She’s given him permission to inspect her vitals - under supervision of the medical droids, of course. And she stays late in the library doing research, eyes pouring over the holo screens of information the archives don’t give her in physical form.

_ Dramaxil. Substance used in android construction, constructed of chemicals listed below-- _

It says nothing about establishing a mind link with your former enemy.

Current enemy? Ally? There don’t seem to be labels for what they are. Although there is a poignant one, etched on her wrist. The timer is still at 0 on all fronts, glowing lightly. What could be potent enough to revive her body, heal her skin? Destroy it, too, and destroy his.

_ Whatever our souls are made of-- _

“Are you finding everything to your liking?”

Another sentry android.

“Perfect.”

_ \--his and mine are the same. _

Virtually nothing she looks through gives her answers. She studied physical sciences, not psychology, and attempting to investigate if the substance somehow integrated itself into her mind would be useless. Anya doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep on a pile of books, the lights above blinding, until she wakes and sees a figure right across from her, hands bound behind her back.

This time she doesn’t startle, or scream. Just rubs at her eyes, and looks at him with concern.

He looks worse than before. His body is refusing to heal. A split lip, clouded eyes, blood etched on his forehead.

The Wraith is torturing him and Ivan.

The agony of knowing that they are in pain nearly crumples her in half.

“I am aware,” he begins, “that I look awful.”

“Can I--” She closes her mouth shut.  _ How bad is your pain? Where is your pain? Can you tell me where it hurts?  _ All ghosts of the past. Maybe her guilt is the only thing holding her back from switching into healer mode. Not that it would do any good now. “Did your hand hurt?”

“Briefly. I suspect yours did before I came over here. Apparently the universe finds it funny to link us together.”

Anya bites her lip.

“What?”

“You don’t look so good,” she says slowly. “Is...how bad is your healing ability compromised?”

Omega grunts, looking down at his bound wrists. He’s standing, but the restraints are still on him. Apparently the Wraith has taken measures. “Badly. You can come back from death. So can I, but we both have our limits. And since we share the same wound, I suspect our bodies have the exact  _ same  _ limits. She’s dosing me, specifically, with a toxin that blocks instant healing.”

She shudders. “And you’re...deteriorating.”

“Yes.”

Anya wants to cry.

She is not going to cry.

She  _ is not going to cry for an enemy. _

“I,” she says, swallowing hard, “am sorry.”

The android looks down at her. “You are.”

Not a question. “I am. I didn’t want it to end like this. I didn’t.”

“No one wants war to end this way,” he murmurs softly.

“Why’d you join it, then?” she retorts. 

He’s silent again. It’s clear she won’t get that answer out of him, at least, so she starts to walk forward. Omega flinches as she comes closer, but doesn’t move. It’s not as if he can, anyway, and her breathing comes out in harsh timings when she stands in front of him, one hand unfurling and closing in and out, like a flower. She isn’t exactly sure what possesses her to touch him, except that she does, and when she does, feels human skin beneath her fingertips. His cheek is warm, and he continues to stare right at her as she presses on a cut on his cheekbone. White hair falls over his forehead, a determined brow to match, long-lashed eyelids. He’s rather handsome, objectively, and it’s another mockery of the universe to throw this fact in her face.

She doesn’t expect her hands to come away clean, because that’s when the cut begins healing at her touch. Anya stumbles backwards as Omega’s eyes widen, glowing a faint blue as they take in the sight. On cue, the other cuts begin to close. The shadow on his neck fades. His posture detenses.

“Is that better?” she asks, when they’re separated again. 

She can’t breathe.

“A bit,” he says, before the bond snaps shut.

____

A lie:

It’s wonderful.

____

The third time comes in the midst of war.

Delta is inspecting her vitals when a wave of pain crests over her. She bends over the inspection table as her hands practically claw into the paper-thin coverings over the leather, gritting her teeth together. It feels like being burned alive, and she gasps for air, finding it harder and harder to breathe by the second.

“What’s wrong?!” Delta gripping her by the forearms, demanding. “What’s wrong, Anya?” No emotion in it. Just a doctor looking out for his client.

So unlike his brother.

She chokes out something she can’t hear half of.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t... _ call me that--” _

The world goes black.

And when she appears in a field full of snow, Omega’s right across from her, hand pressed to his abdomen.

When they reach for each other, she tells herself it’s instinct.

Someone wounded needs her help, and she’s there to help, after all, because that’s what she does. She can’t stand pain. The restraints around his wrists and ankles are gone, and she recognizes Delta’s sentries battling forces she can’t quite see in the blizzard. Ivan is nowhere to be found, but her instincts aren’t panicking quite yet. Delta made a promise, and if he doesn’t stick to it, she’s going to give him hell. Maybe shoot him instead. Oddly enough, Omega doesn’t look as bad as before. But something sickly and poisonous crawls under his veins, glimmering in static blue. 

“Let me,” she insists, before he can speak, and reaches out.

The second her fingers brush over his wounds, he winces, but they begin to close up.

It’s only after she realizes his hands are on her waist to keep her from slipping in the snow does she realize the pain in her abdomen has quelled, as well. No one else seems to perceive her - perhaps the substance binding them together has also rendered one of them invisible. He can’t be seen on her side, and her on his.

“Is he safe?” is what leaves her lips first.

Omega nods curtly. “He is. But you need to leave,  _ now.” _

“I can’t just--”

“You must. My brother has kept his promise, and no doubt you’re already arousing suspicion on his side. It’s necessary, Anya.” Stern as ever, even when gazing into her eyes like this. 

“What makes us so special?”

He’s silent as she scans his skin. 

“It’s--”

“Now isn’t the time for those questions.”

“I’ll be gone soon enough, due to whatever bond this is,” she insists, gripping his arm. Slowly, she watches as Delta’s forces advance on the perimeter behind him. “You need to leave, if anything. She’ll find you.”

“She won’t,” he says grimly. “I made sure of that.”

Anya doesn’t press further about what he’s done, not with that gun in his hands. “How’d you two even escape--”

“That comes later.”

_ “Listen,”  _ she snaps, then quells her temper, sucking in a breath, “I might not get your answers, or answers at all, but I need one thing, Omega.”

First times are for everything, she supposes.

It’s almost funny - she shot him, and now she’s healing him, talking to him like they’re not on opposite sides of a war at all.

“Which is?”

“An ally.” She holds out her damaged hand, scarred as it may be. “I meant what I said before the Wraith. You get me - but I get you, too. If we want to end this war. Please. Ivan won’t understand, but -  _ please.” _

The sounds of gunfire are getting louder. He has to get out of here,  _ now. _

He doesn’t hesitate before clasping his own in hers. It’s so much larger than hers, paler, too, but warm as ever. He’s always been warm, almost human, if she allows herself to believe in such things, foolish as they may be.

“Believe it or not, but I do not believe in unnecessary lives taken. I will end this with you.”

“You  _ swear.” _

“I swear it.”

“No more killing each other. No more betrayal--”

“I said I swear it, Anya.”

“Then…” She hesitates. “Thank you,” she says, and it’s all she can muster, their new alliance striking a cord across the bond before it snaps shut. 

When she comes to in the infirmary, it’s Delta who’s staring at her. She speaks before he gets the chance to.

“Looks like you’re getting your answers,” Anya breathes, her gaze fiercer than any killer’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, upon seeing that the wiki doesn't give me any info on Dramaxil: It's free real estate.
> 
> Anyhow, I just think that hot android men are neat. Kudos and comments are my lifeblood, and I thank you all for reading <3


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